La Vie en Rose // Percy Jackson

v. demon pigeons attack

The next few days were torture, just like Tantalus wanted.

First there was Tyson moving into the Poseidon cabin, which Percy didn't seem enthused by. Honestly, I didn't blame him.

And then there were the comments from the other campers. Suddenly, we weren't Percy and Liv Jackson, the cool guy and girl who'd retrieved Zeus's lightning bolt last summer. Now we were Percy and Liv Jackson, the poor schmucks with the ugly monster for a brother.

"He's not my real brother!" Percy and protested whenever Tyson wasn't around. "He's more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like... a half-brother twice removed, or something."

Nobody bought it.

He seemed angry with his dad, and honestly, no one could blame him.

Annabeth and I tried to make him feel better. I suggested we team up for the chariot race to take his mind off his problems. Don't get me wrong—we each hated Tantalus and we were worried sick about camp—but we didn't know what to do about it. Until we could come up with some brilliant plan to save Thalia's tree, we figured we might as well go along with the races. After all, Annabeth's mom, Athena, had invented the chariot, and Percy's and my dad had created horses. Together they would have owned that track, but of course, Annabeth made me go with Percy.

One morning Percy and I were sitting by the canoe lake sketching chariot designs, Annabeth had chosen to be with one of my more tolerable siblings at their request, when some jokers from my cabin walked by and asked Percy if he needed to borrow some eyeliner for his eye... "Oh sorry, eyes."

"I'll deal with you lot later!" I snapped.

Trevor grinned. "Defending your boyfriend, that's sweet."

"He's not my boyfriend! Go away!"

As they walked away laughing, I grumbled, "Just ignore them, Percy. It isn't your fault you have a monster for a brother."

"He's not our brother!" Percy snapped. "And he's not a monster, either!"

I raised my eyebrows. "Hey, don't get mad at me! And technically, he is a monster."

"Well you gave him permission to enter the camp."

"Because it was the only way to save your life! I mean... I'm sorry, Percy, I didn't expect Poseidon to claim him. Cyclopes are the most deceitful, treacherous—"

"He is not! What have you and Annabeth got against Cyclopes, anyway?"

Mine ears felt hot and probably turned a different color. Percy seemed to get the feeling there was something I wasn't telling him—something bad.

"Just forget it," I said. "Now, the axle for this chariot—"

"You're treating him like he's this horrible thing," Percy said. "He saved my life."

I threw down my pencil and stood. "Then maybe you two should design a chariot with him."

"Maybe we should."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

I stormed off.

As I walked away, I threw my hands into the air. "Why are boys so infuriating?!"

During pegasus lessons, which meant, yay, I was with Percy, again, Silena Beauregard, one of the nicer girls from my cabin, gave Percy his first riding lesson on a pegasus. She explained that there was only one immortal winged horse named Pegasus, who still wandered free somewhere in the skies, but over the eons he'd sired a lot of children, none quite so fast or heroic, but all named after the first and greatest.